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I must confess something to you: I'm not a columnist. It's true. I'm just a guy who enjoys having his knees in the breeze, same as you. When the SMR crew phoned to tell me they had exhausted all other options in their search for regular contributing writers (including trained monkeys), which therefore meant I could have the job, I was ecstatic. Not just because I was hired, but because I could stop sending videos of myself and my "nine homeless children" pleading for a spot on the SMR payroll. Besides, the neighborhood kids were getting tired of being stiffed on the five bucks I promised them to limp around and look needy on the videos.
Anyway, to get inspired for my first article here, I slipped into my Genuine Leather Yamaha Road Racer Jacket (made by Hein Gericke). It's a few years old now and it has that smell. You know the smell I'm talking about; that sweet, intoxicating treated leather-sweat-highway grit-bug juice-and gasoline smell. If Calvin Klein produced cologne that smelled like my jacket, the sales tax alone would probably generate enough money to fix our economy ten times over. It's not roses, I admit, but it's a scent that makes a statement; a stink that says something. I ride, it says. I ride and I don't care what you think about it.
I bought this particular jacket when I purchased my current bike, a 2006 Yamaha FZ6. It's a full racing jacket featuring preformed elbow pads which force your arms to bend like an arthritic old man's and make it impossible to do anything except ride a motorcycle 900 miles per hour. These elbow pads, I've discovered, are why road racers drink from high-tech squirt bottles as they sit on the starting grid waiting to race-it keeps them from chasing their arms around in a circle trying to drink the old-fashioned way. (Actually, some of the pros appear to employ professional "squirt bottle assistants" who do the squirting for them. I wonder who I can send a video to for that job?)
Anyway, I have to admit that when I chose my jacket I was not too concerned about the preformed padding, armored shoulders, or the visible-from-space reflective piping stitched into the multiple layers of premium cowhide. Nor was I all that discerning when it came to the overall toughness of my jacket, though, let me tell you, this jacket is Clint Eastwood tough (the Dirty Harry Eastwood, not the Bridges Over Madison County Eastwood). No, sadly, my primary concern was less aligned with the sensibilities of safety and more fixated on the futilities of fashion; specifically, I wanted my new jacket to match my new bike. It's vain, I know, but so what? My belt never matches my shoes; my socks never match my pants; and if I happen to grab a bright orange hunting cap (with fuzzy earflaps) as I head out the door to a funeral or wedding, then so be it; but my bike and my jacket have to match. There is simply no other way.
My point to all of this, though-as if it were possible to pull this article out of its present tailspin and crash land it at some kind of point-is that riders should buy their leather jackets for safety and not for the fickle sentiments of fashion. Besides, the real thing is always more fashionable. How I ended up with a safe jacket despite my vanity is a question best left unanswered. But if you run across a sport biker at the gas station who just happens to be wearing a hideous orange hunting cap and a mismatched shoes/pants/belt combination, please, feel free to compliment him on his awesome looking (and awesome smelling) leather jacket. And if you hear of any squirt bottle job openings, be sure to let him know about that too.
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